Some Illumination Favorites

I loved this article recently written by one of my favorite authors here on Medium/Illumination:

Holly Jahangiri has a way with words and the turn of a phrase that never fails to grab me. She’s adept at finding amazing materials and providing links that delight, enlighten and entertain. The link she provides in the article to a spot by Trevor Noah had me rolling on the floor. I had not heard of Trevor Noah before, but he has a presence on Instagram.

I love the fact that she “tags” an aspiring writer, Amy Marley, in her “virtual tag game.” Such is her playfulness.

Holly knows how to have fun with her writing and encourage others along the way, as she’s done for me. So, I thought I’d return the favor with this small tribute.

I’ve been friends with Holly on Facebook for several years. We met through a mutual friend, Rasheed Hooda, another of my favorite Illumination authors. Like Holly, Rasheed is also a published author (Life It’s a Trip).

The reason I’m writing this short article, other than to promote a couple of dear friends and mentors here on Medium/Illumination, is that I’m a newbie and still learning how to do things like inserting references to the work of other writers.

If you don’t know Rasheed here’s a brief introduction he wrote:

He calls himself Mister Weirdo, but from where I sit he is not all that weird. He has a different lifestyle than most of us. For example, he lives in his van, which he calls his “mobile domicile”. A couple of years ago while in his early 60s, Rasheed walked Route 66 from Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier. That takes a lot of perseverance and determination. And he has an even loftier goal: to some day summit Mt. Everest.

Another friend and author/poet I’ve met here on Illumination is Kevin Buddaeus. learn more about him here:

Kevin and I have this in common: we are both married to Japanese wives. Today (4/20/20) my wife and I are celebrating our 52nd anniversary. Seems like many lifetimes ago that we said “I do” in that tiny chapel in Tachikawa, Japan. Many rivers of water under the bridge since then.

I have to admit that my reading and posting has been rather sporadic. One of the wonderful and maddening things about Medium is that one post leads to another and to another and before I know it an hour or two has gone by. I not only read the post, but show my appreciation by highlighting, clapping and writing responses. I’m hoping that through all that I’m helping with the author’s stats and contributing my 2 cents toward their paycheck.

I like to write responses, but one feature of Medium that drives me nuts is the fact that it takes me away from the article and it is not easy to go back and forth between the article and the response I am writing, which I often like to do. I belong to another writing group that lets you scroll back up to the story to check facts while you write your response. I hope Medium will develop such a functionality. Maybe I just don’t know how to use all the tools yet. It takes a while for us old dogs to learn new tricks. But, with patience and persistence, we learn.

This is not one of those longer posts that will garner much reading time, but I hope I’ve provided some value and encouraged a few folks. I want to do more of that encouraging as I learn how to use the tools better and get more experience on this platform.

Thanks for reading. If you’d care to look at some of my longer stories, here are three:

Your views and reading is always appreciated. Be blessed.